


Lonely But Not Alone

by wanderingscholarlad



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Betting as a love language, Booker & Joe friendship, F/F, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nicky & Andy friendship, Separation Anxiety, Slow dancing in the kitchen, Themes of Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26920831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingscholarlad/pseuds/wanderingscholarlad
Summary: Joe and Nicky don’t ever protest when they need to split up for a mission, even if Andy and Booker can tell that they spend every moment separated subconsciously looking for each other. The seventh time Joe turns as if to say something to someone standing next to him, Booker takes a deep swig from his flask and tries not to reach for his phone to text Andy and see if Nicky is any better than Joe.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 26
Kudos: 519





	Lonely But Not Alone

Joe and Nicky don’t ever protest when they need to split up for a mission, even if Andy and Booker can tell that they spend every moment separated subconsciously looking for each other. The seventh time Joe turns as if to say something to someone standing next to him, Booker takes a deep swig from his flask and tries not to reach for his phone to text Andy and see if Nicky is any better than Joe. 

After the tenth time, he doesn’t bother with the flask, just grabs his phone and sends off a short text:  _ 10 half sentences starting with love, babe or hayati. Nicky? _

_ Has reached out for Joe 12 times by my count. I win. _

_ There’s still five more days. _

_ Sickening. _

The half spoken sentences and the aborted reaching for another are hardly the most sickeningly sweet sign that Joe and Nicky are missing each other’s presence deeply. It’s also in the way Joe keeps looking up from his book, wanting to share what he’s just read with Nicky - Booker doesn’t particularly care for books on the evolution of religion, let alone ones that go into painstaking detail about the development of different schools of thought on scripture. Joe reads him sections anyway, and Booker is fond enough to attempt to pay attention and raise points of debate with Joe, but they both know it’s not the same and that they would be better off putting on a football game. It’s not quite the same as the steady but passionate debates he and Nicky have, pressed close on the couch and pointing at specific sentences as they discuss words and privileging of certain narratives. It’s a different kind of love and closeness. Booker throws his hands in the air when Joe’s team scores and Joe grins happily, the quiet ache of missing Nicky not gone, but momentarily soothed by spending time with Booker.

It’s also in the way Nicky makes Joe’s favourites for dinner, makes enough for four and half dances around the kitchen, as if he’s expecting Joe’s hand on his waist and a partner to waltz with at any moment. Andy caves on the fourth night of this, steps into Nicky’s space and waltzes around the kitchen with him until they’re both breathless and laughing. It’s not quite the same as dancing with Joe, that usually ends with them pink cheeked and kissing in the kitchen while Andy and Booker groan at them and tease Nicky that dinner is going to burn. As if. Nicky is perfectly capable of dancing with the love of his life and cooking his family dinner. But as Andy spins him under her arm dramatically, he lets himself be carried by the raucous joy and lets the steady ache of missing Joe go for a moment, caught up in the joy of spending time with Andy.

By and far the most sickening thing about Joe and Nicky being separated for a mission is waking up in the middle of the night for a glass of water or the bathroom, and seeing them asleep, reaching for the other.

Nicky is fast asleep when Andy wakes up desperate for a glass of water. Nicky and Joe sleep fine without the other there, but it is blatantly obvious that they prefer sleeping intertwined. Andy can’t remember a time when they didn’t sleep curled into each other, Joe pressed against Nicky’s back and Nicky cradling Joe’s arms close to himself. It was almost a hundred and fifty years before she and Quynh found them though, and she knows that there was a long time that they were enemies and then reluctant companions, before they were lovers who held each other close under the soft light of the moon. She would press her nose against Quynh’s hair whenever she thought about it, and be so eternally grateful that she and Quynh had never been so separate from each other in the way that Nicky and Joe had. She had been foolish then, to assume that she and Quynh would always be able to sleep pressed together, hearts beating in a steady rhythm and fingers intertwined. She doesn’t begrudge Joe and Nicky their love, but when she wakes to see Nicky sprawled out on his front, in the way he only ever does when he is sleeping alone, something in her heart twists. His hands are tangled in the blankets near his chin, holding them taught against him, mimicking the weight of Joe against his back.

She moves silently through the safehouse, to find a glass of water and press her forehead against the cool fridge door, breathing tightly. She holds her blankets like that nightly. 

She takes long pulls of the cold water and steadies herself. It’s not Nicky’s fault he reminded her of holding Quynh, but something about the knowledge that in less than a week, Nicky will get to sleep wrapped in Joe’s arms again still manages to upset her. She swears quietly when she hears soft footsteps and then Nicky is leaning against the doorframe, blinking sleepily at her.

“Is something wrong, Andy?”

“Nothing.”

“Right.” He clearly doesn’t believe her, the way he folds his arm and raises an eyebrow makes that painfully obvious. She sighs again. He’ll never judge her for this and she needs to let herself admit things sometimes. It’s good for her.   
“I miss Quynh.”

It hangs between them, sharp and heavy in the low lit kitchen and Nicky’s eyes go all sad and soft.

“Andy.”

“Nicky.” She doesn’t want pity, she doesn’t want platitudes.

She gets neither. Instead, she gets Nicky’s arms around her shoulders, holding her together so she can break down. Her shoulders shake, but she doesn’t cry, can’t cry about this anymore. They stand there in the predawn kitchen, in the same spot they’d waltzed earlier and Nicky starts to move slowly. He’s humming a lilting melody and soon their waltzing slowly, pressed close and comforting each other. They stay like that for god knows how long, until the sun is creeping over the horizon and their eyes are drooping with the need to sleep.

They don’t bother going back to bed, instead curling up on the couch together, under a soft blanket and falling asleep like that. Nicky’s nose pressed against Andy’s hair, and her ear pressed against his heart. They’ll wake up with stiff backs, but the steady comfort will have been worth it. They shared an unspoken understanding in that predawn kitchen and don’t need words to consolidate their comfort.

* * *

Booker wakes up and stumbles to the bathroom, cursing quietly when he accidentally walks into the doorframe. He’s quieter coming back, glances over to check that Joe is still asleep. He is. He’s curled around a pillow, and Booker just knows that he has a second one wedged between his knees. He’s mimicking holding Nicky, twining their legs together, even when Nicky isn’t there to hold. It twists into Booker’s heart like a knife.

He had slept similarly, for the first fifty years of his immortality. Arms curled around his own jacket usually, pressing his nose into the collar as if he could still get a sniff of the rose attar that his wife had worn behind her ears and at her wrists. He feels so desperately lonely as he presses his own wrists to his mouth, imagining her pulse against his, the soft scent of roses almost present if he closes his eyes hard enough. He bites back a sob.

He tries to muffle the wounded sound in his own hands but Joe is already sitting up.   
“Book?”

“Go back to bed.” Booker turns his face away, can’t bear the sight of Joe pushing aside the figment of Nicky he’d created for himself in favour of Booker. It feels wrong somehow, even though it’s only just pillows. Joe shouldn’t push Nicky aside for anyone.

“I can’t, and you know it,” Joe says gently, sitting up and facing Booker properly.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s never nothing.”

Joe sits there patiently, waiting for Booker to be ready to talk.

“I just,” he takes a steadying breath, “When I close my eyes, I can smell her perfume. I can almost pretend that I could open my eyes and she would be there.”

He doesn’t need to explain further for Joe to know that he’s talking about his wife.

Joe nods. He misses Nicky like he would miss a limb, even when they’ve only been separated for a few days. He can’t imagine having to live an eternity without him. He can’t truly understand what Booker feels, but he feels physically sick at the very thought of losing Nicky like that.

He moves across to sit next to Booker, pressing their shoulders together and reaching for his sketchbook, turning on the bedside light, “Describe her for me?”

“She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Tall, only a little shorter than Andy, with long brown hair. Light though, it turned to gold in the sunshine.”

They sit like that as the sun comes up, pressed shoulder to shoulder as Booker talks himself hoarse, flask completely untouched, and Joe nods along, hands shifting as he sketches and sketches.

The sun is high in the sky when Booker sighs again, “She was my whole world and the world under my feet fell away when I lost her.”

“It’s not the same,” Joe says quietly and passes across the page he’d been working at, “But maybe it’s a small comfort.”

Booker presses his fist to his mouth and drops his head to rest against Joe’s shoulder, blinking back tears as he stares at his wife again. It’s her, her proud and intelligent brows arching up and a mischievous tilt to her smile, challenging him from the page as she had in life. Joe has captured the essence of her and even drawn soft roses in the corner of the page, and Booker can’t stop staring.

He doesn’t have the words to express how his exhausted heart races, so he just presses his hand into Joe’s and they consider her portrait together. It’s silent, but comfortably so.

* * *

Four days later, they reunite in Brussels. Nicky and Andy are sitting out in a cobbled square, glasses of white wine untouched between them as Nicky glances impatiently around every few seconds and Andy laughs at him. The tangled burrs that twisted into her throat the other night have retreated again and she can’t help but grin when Nicky stands up abruptly and steps away from the table and into the square.

Booker is having to walk at pace to keep up with Joe, who looks as delighted to see Nicky as he does after minutes or months of separation. Booker sinks into Nicky’s chair and steals his wine glass as Joe reaches Nicky and swings him around with apparently no effort at all. The two of them are radiant in their own ways, Joe laughing and stealing a kiss, Nicky with a soft but endlessly pleased smile putting a hand up to rest on Joe’s cheek and comment about how wild his beard has gotten.

Andy rolls her eyes a little and turns to Booker, “So?”

“17.”

“Hmm, 14.”

“Pay up.”

“What are you two betting on?” Nicky asks as he sits down, eyes gleaming at the chance to get involved.

“On how much you two lovebirds missed each other.”

“You can’t put a number on that, boss,” Joe protests, but he’s still beaming too much to protest all that much, and Andy would bet even more money that Nicky’s hand is in his under the table.

“Yeah, we can.”

“How?” Nicky asks, curious.

“Joe drew seventeen separate sketches of you.”

“You said “oh Joe would like that” no less than fourteen times.”

“Wrong,” Joe says with a wink, “I drew Nicky twenty times. But some were not safe for Booker’s young eyes.”

That comment immediately prompts him and Booker to devolve into a centuries old argument about how Booker is technically nine years older than Joe, even if Joe is seven hundred years older than Booker.

It’s Nicky’s turn to roll his eyes, but he does it with such fondness that Andy has to kick him under the table. She surveys them, and even as she wishes Quynh could see them, she feels a bone deep contentment settle into her.


End file.
